ATTENTION: Is your child ready for school?
Set Your Child Up for a Confident and Successful Start to School
Our structured, play-based, teacher-led program focuses on literacy, numeracy, emotional regulation and classroom readiness, ensuring children begin school with strong foundations and a smooth transition.
Next Step: Book Your Trial Session
TESTIMONIALS
What Parents Are Saying
Does this sound familiar?
Your child is starting Prep next year and you want them to feel confident.
You’re not sure if their early literacy or number skills are quite where they need to be.
Transitions, routines or new environments can feel overwhelming for them.
You want them to walk into their first day of school feeling calm and capable.
You’d love extra support from qualified teachers, in a small, nurturing environment.
What We Do
Small, Calm Learning Groups
Children learn in small groups (maximum 8), allowing teachers to give personalised attention while maintaining a calm, structured environment.
This helps children feel safe, supported and confident.
Early Literacy Foundations
We build strong phonics awareness, early reading skills and writing confidence through engaging, age-appropriate activities. Children develop the foundational skills they need before stepping into Prep.
Early Numeracy
Skills
Through hands-on learning, children strengthen number recognition, counting, patterns and basic problem-solving
skills. We build confidence with maths in a gentle, play-based, structured way.
Teacher-Led
Sessions
All sessions are led by qualified, experienced teachers, not student tutors. This ensures your child is guided by professionals who understand curriculum and early childhood development.
Confidence & Emotional Readiness
We focus on independence, listening skills, resilience and classroom routines. Children learn how to follow instructions, transition smoothly and feel emotionally ready for school life.
Parent Communication
Parents receive regular communication and feedback across the term. You’ll feel confident knowing exactly how your child is progressing and where they’re growing.
STILL NOT SURE?
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know before enrolling.
Is Preparation Club only for children who are struggling?
Not at all. Preparation Club is for any child who would benefit from extra support before starting Prep. Whether that’s building confidence, strengthening early literacy and numeracy skills, consolidating emerging skills or simply feeling more secure and ready for school routines.
What age or year levels is Preparation Club for?
Preparation Club is designed for children who are preparing to start Prep next year as well as children in the early years of school who could benefit from extra support with foundational skills and confidence.
How is this different from preschool or kindy?
Preparation Club is teacher-led and structured with a focus on early literacy and numeracy foundations, listening and classroom routines and confidence and independence. It’s about giving children extra confidence and skills before they transition to Prep (or early primary years), in a calm small-group environment.
How big are the groups?
Groups are intentionally small (maximum 6 children) so that each child gets personalised attention and support. This also helps create a calm and encouraging learning environment.
What skills do you focus on in Preparation Club?
We build early reading and phonics foundations, early number sense and numeracy, fine motor and early writing confidence, listening, turn-taking and classroom routines and confidence and independence. Each session is engaging and age-appropriate, with lots of encouragement and success moments.
Do you assess my child before starting?
We begin with a free Readiness Chat (and optional informal check-in) so we understand your child’s strengths and areas to support. This helps us tailor sessions to suit their needs.
What is the commitment?
Preparation Club runs on a term-based enrolment. Children attend weekly 2-hour sessions throughout the term to build consistency and real progress. You can book your place for the remaining weeks of the current term.
MEET THE FOUNDER
Hi! I'm Ali.
HeadStart’s Founder, Ali Carter, is a qualified and experienced primary school teacher with a passion for supporting children in their early years.
Ali has taught across private schools on the Coast and in Brisbane and understands the skills, both academic and emotional, that help children transition confidently into Prep.
Ali believes that school readiness is about much more than letters and numbers. It’s about helping children feel safe, capable and secure in themselves as learners. Her teaching approach is calm, nurturing and highly personalised. She takes the time to understand each child’s individual strengths, needs and learning style so that support feels encouraging and achievable.
After having her daughter, Ali returned to work in a school readiness program and saw first-hand how powerful the right support can be before children begin school. She watched children build confidence, independence, social and emotional skills and develop strong foundations in phonics and early numeracy, all in an environment where they felt supported and celebrated.
That experience inspired Ali to create HeadStart Club and develop Preparation Club — a teacher-led, term-based program designed to help children feel confident, ready and excited for Prep.
HeadStart only hires qualified teachers, each with many years of classroom experience and a nurturing, encouraging approach. Our team is carefully selected to ensure every child feels understood, supported and proud of their progress.
